I Have Lightroom. Do I Need Photoshop?

Every time I talk about Lightroom I am asked some variation of this question. I usually answer it by saying “I don’t know…. Do you?” Of course I quickly follow up with a short explanation of why someone would or would not need Photoshop in addition to Lightroom.

Lightroom is for photographers. Photoshop is for graphic artists and designers.

OK, put down the torches and pitchforks while I explain!

Lightroom was designed from end to end with a photographer’s needs in mind. The tools available in the modules all address some aspect of the photographer’s workflow. Photoshop, on the other hand, was not designed with the photographer in mind but with the graphic artist in mind. It’s a powerful and rich toolset but only a small portion address a photographer’s needs. It is arguably the premiere pixel based editor but do you need all that power?

Lightroom will meet the needs of 85% to 90% of photographers 90% to 95% of the time. This is especially true now that plugins like Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, (Nik Software), Photomatix Pro (HDRSoft), Noise Ninja (PictureCode), and others are available directly in Lightroom, without the need for Photoshop. Now, more and more of a photographer’s needs are met directly inside Lightroom.

Since version 2, Lightroom has offered localized adjustments and masks. Even though layers aren’t technically available in Lightroom, the touch up tools and adjustment brushes mimic many aspects of layers. All this combined with digital asset management, slide shows, website creation, an excellent print engine, and export/upload capabilities, make the purchase of Photoshop harder and harder to justify.

If you need to use layers, complicated masks, blending modes, alternate color modes (CMYK or Lab), 3D, or other things that are well beyond the reach of Lightroom then you may need Photoshop. Keep in mind that the cost and the learning curve for Photoshop are both pretty steep! I recommend that you really look at your toolset in Lightroom to make sure you really can’t achieve the outcome you want before going down the Photoshop road.

For the most part everything I’ve said here about Lightroom is equally applicable to Aperture. While tools and terminology differ the decision process is the same.

So do you need Photoshop if you have Lightroom?

I don’t know….. Do you?

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Tags: Lightroom, Photoshop

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 12th, 2009 at 7:00 am and is filed under Lightroom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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About the Author: Gene McCullagh
Contact Gene

Gene is an Adobe Community Professional and and Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop, and InDesign, and an avid Lightroom fan. He belongs to the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). Gene also the Co-Founder, Manager and a frequent blogger for the Dallas Fort Worth Adobe User Group (DFWAUG).

In addition to running Lightroom Secrets, Gene also contributes to O'Reilly's media blog, moderates on the Adobe forums, and helps out on lightroomforums.net.

Gene McCullagh

Open preferences and go to the External Editing tab. Set up pse in the additional external editor section. When you are done be sure to go back up to the dropdown and give editor preset a new name like "PS Elements". Now it will appear in the menu when you go to PHOTO...EDIT IN...

Check a previous article I did that has some screenshots of this process http://bit.ly/bJmZeW

I hope that helps!
chitom

Thank you, Gene... How does one set up an "alternate external editor"? I cannot find it in the guide... Thank you for your help...
chitom

I have a different problem... How do I get my LT 2.6 to recognize Photoshop Elements 7.0 as my outside editor? It recognized 5.0 but after I upgraded to 7.0 and uninstalled 5.0, I can't get my LT to recognize the upgraded version.
Gene McCullagh

Hi chitom!

LR 2.x doesn't support pse 7. You can set it up as an alternate external editor though. Once LR 3 is fully released it should see pse 7.
Dennis

Hi - I'm trying to find the answer to the opposite question;
I have Photoshop CS4 - do I need Lightroom?
I'm an avid amateur photographer - I've learned to do what I need in PS, but I've been frustrated with Bridge, so was considering Lightroom as an alternative for media management.
What's your advice?
Thanks
Gene McCullagh

Hi Dennis!

You can manage your images using only Bridge and Photoshop. But as you have seen it isn't the best workflow. Lightroom is really designed to manage a photographic workflow. It simplifies keywording, sorting, collection, rating, etc.

Photoshop wasn't designed to act on a large number of images at once. Yes, there are actions and batch capabilities but they are cumbersome when compared to Lightroom's metadata approach.

I would strongly suggest you download either the free 30 day trial of Lightroom 2.6 or the public beta of Lightroom 3. Just remember that LR3 is BETA. So don't work on any important files with it until the final release comes out.
giovanni7

I think you miss a big point here, Gene, by retreading the tired old marketing spin "Lightroom is for photographers. Photoshop is for graphic artists and designers". That's not an argument for Lightroom, is it? It's a case for a simpler, cut down Photostop, ie Elements, as the other poster is pointing out.

You dig yourself deeper into this hole by contrasting the complexity of Photoshop's tools with LR's and adding "All this combined with digital asset management..." The trouble is, these goodies are the very key to choosing PS or LR, not simply an advantage of LR. We wouldn't have LR without them because without large numbers of pictures, we would have gotten on fine with Photoshop. But once we racked up the volume, DAM and batch processing both become necessary and the PS/ACR/Br workflow was a brittle contraption indeed. You can make it work, but only with skills in actions and scripts, and in making multiple applications hang together, and even then something breaks the batch process. This, not the supposed difficulty of Photoshop, was the breaking point. Hence Aperture, hence Lightroom.

Back to the question, why PS if you've got LR? Well, while the background reasoning was dubious, it does come down to the need for pixel level manipulation and compositing. But if your issues are about managing your pictures, and adjustment and output of more than one picture at a time, that need is fast reducing. So I kinda agree with your end point, while being unconvinced with how you get there!
Gene McCullagh

The LR for photographer vs. PS for designer line is not an argument for LR or marketing spin. It is an observation about the reason the two products exist and the fact that they are targeted at two different markets. Yes, a second level to this discussion is PS vs. Elements. But that's a different (yet related) question.

The question is posed by people already using LR who now wonder if they need PS. It's not from someone who uses neither and wonders which they should get. That's an entirely different discussion. Were that the question then all your points are spot on and extremely valid.

However, if you are a photographer already working in LR the question of whether you also need PS is a valid one. At that point you are not asking which one should you buy. You're asking if you need the extra power PS affords.
BarbarellaJ

There is another variation to that question: I have Lightroom - do I need the "big" Photoshop or does Element do the job 99% of the times that I might want to go into Photoshop?

I have an old version of Elements but didn't really get the hang of it when I discovered Lightroom and fell in love with it. On second sight, granted... Now that I have the hang of it, I'm slowly discovering Lightrooms boundaries. I haven't discovered all of them yet, so I can't even say how often I might feel the need to go outside of Lightroom. But when I do, I guess the budget would rather call for Elements, not the big gun.

Does anybody have an idea/opionion/suggestion about combining Lightroom with Elements or is that just sheer stupidity?
Gene McCullagh

LOL You're getting ahead of me. Photoshop vs. Elements is on my to do list of topics. (so stay tuned!)

The same reasoning applies to Elements, though on a smaller scale. If PS is outside your budget or too much for your needs I heartily recommend Elements as your external editor of choice. LR will happily incorporate Elements as seamlessly as PS.

(One word of caution; Elements 7 came out after the last LR upgrade round so it is not yet fully compatible. LR will incorporate Elements 7 shortly. However, that's only on the import side and not on the external editing side.)

LR's only limitations in this area are in pixel based edits. LR is not a pixel editor like PS or Elements. But, truth be told, there's very little reason to pixel edit for most images. I rarely go from LR to PS since nearly all of my adjustments and edits are possible right inside LR. Of course, there are those few images where I want to do some major enhancements and need the power of PS.

Look at your workflow and see what you need. Elements has 80% of Photoshop's toolset for photographers so don't hesitate to incorporate it into your LR workflow. It's hard to beat Elements' price for the power it gives you!